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Meeting Sprint Commitments – Why All The Fuss?
Scrum
Meeting sprint commitments in a Scrum environment is apparently very important, but I don’t understand why. If the only real driver to meeting sprint commitments is so you can calculate your average sprint velocity, does it really matter what sprint you get your points in?
For instance if in sprint 1 we commit to 20 points, but only actually make 15 points, then 5 points will be rolled over to the next sprint. The team will complete these 5 points in the following sprint and will get the credit for this and any other points they complete in sprint 2. So eventually the team will get their points and as sprint velocity is an average over many sprints it won’t make any difference to which sprint we get them in. So why all the fuss?
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I think you’re missing the point, sprint commitments are taken very seriously because they come from the team. No-one tells the team what they should commit to, so when they do commit it’s seen as a contract between the team and the Product Owner. Scrum is based on trust so it’s really important that the team strive to complete their commitments. It should be rare that the team do not complete their commitments, if you find yourself in a situation where the team are constantly missing their sprint commitments then you need to get the bottom of it and quickly.
Consistently missing sprint commitments becomes an even bigger problem when you have multiple Scrum teams working together as team B will look at the commitments of team A and plan any dependent work accordingly based on the assumption team A will complete their sprint commitments (obviously in theory you the teams will not be dependent on one another but in some cases it’s not possible to eliminate every dependency).
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LikeDislikeI see, but do you have any tips on how I can get the team to meet their commitments?
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LikeDislikeEducation is key and #tomb is correct when he talks about trust being a key element. Whilst it’s true you don’t want the team to overcommit (Scrum says teams should work at a sustainable pace) you also don’t want a lethargic mentality to meeting sprint commitments. What you really want is to see a real push from the team to meet their commitments, it demonstrates the team has pride in their work and are take their commitments seriously.
ScrumMaster’s can help the team achieve this mentality by doing simple things:
If your team has a lethargic attitude to meeting sprint commitments then a well-attended end of sprint demo (sprint review) is a great way of providing that sense of urgency to complete sprints. If you know that the high profile figures within the business are attending your end of sprint demo, what team member wants to have it announced that they didn’t meet their sprint commitments?
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LikeDislikeThanks, great advice from both of you. I particularly like the stand-up tips, thanks guys
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